


What A Pack Does

by krizza



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Past Abuse, True Alpha Scott
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 02:53:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1493953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krizza/pseuds/krizza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. When Scott McCall and his pack find two hostages hidden away after defeating the Alpha pack, what do they do with them?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First fanfiction in a while so hopefully this goes well!

The fight took hours. In the end it was only the lunar eclipse that saved Scott McCall's pack - those ten minutes of equality were all that his pack needed. Alphas and betas were put on the same playing field, which turned out better for the betas. Derek, Peter, Erica and Boyd were used to being weaker than the others. They'd learned how to make up for it in other ways, compensating for their lack of strength with speed and with cunning. So when the Alpha pack lost what made them Alpha, the betas turned the tide of the battle.

They were not unscathed.There were injuries and they were all starting to limp out of the dusty industrial building where the Alphas had apparently been staying, when Peter made a shushing noise.

"We got them all," Derek protested gruffly, but Peter waved a hand, shushing them all again. Scott could feel his temper rising. It'd been a long battle, they were tired, and Boyd was going to need at least a day of rest before he could stand on his own again. He did not need whatever crap Peter Hale had up his sleeve right now.

"Peter," he warned, but then he stopped, realization dawning on his features. Scott could hear it too.

"What?" Erica snapped, slightly bent under the weight of Boyd's arm slung over her shoulders. When Scott shushed her, though, she fell silent with everyone else. Scott's eyes met Peter's and an instant later, they were acting on what seemed like the same page, one written on with invisible ink as far as everyone else was concerned.

Scott found the trap door first. The Alpha and his pack, all five of them, stood over it while they tried to work out what they should do. "Someone is definitely down there," Peter intoned. There was no way of knowing who it was, though. It could be another Alpha wolf, or one of their allies. It could be their emissary or another Druid. It could be anyone, really, or anything and Scott didn't want to endanger everyone just to see who it was.

"Maybe we should leave them," Erica suggested. "If they wanted to fight us, they would've came up here." Scott's hesitation was palpable. As was Peter's.

"If it is one of them and we leave them, they could gather their strength and come for us later. The last thing we need is an Alpha with a vendetta against us," Peter pointed out. And that sealed it for Scott. They had to see what was under the floor.

In the end it was Derek who came with him down into the cellar. Derek was strong for a beta and Scott trusted him. Well, he trusted him more than he trusted Derek's uncle, Peter, but that didn't exactly say very much. There were hunters that Scott trusted more than Peter Hale. Derek tugged the trap door open and Scott descended the stairs into the dusty cellar first. It was a large, single room that had very few things inside it. Off to the side along one wall was what looked like a large, padlocked freezer. Scott was still studying it when he heard Derek's breath catch. The other werewolf was moving to the other side of the cellar, behind the stairs they'd just come down. An instant later, Scott could see why.

There was a naked young man chained to the wall.

Derek knelt in front of him in an instant, checking for signs of life. "He's breathing," Derek reported to Scott, studying the boy closely. "I think he's human." Whatever he was, he wasn't in very good shape. Apart from being filthy and underfed, he'd clearly been hurt and used in ways that made Scott's skin crawl just thinking about them. "Scott, what should we do?" It took very little effort for Scott to break the chains from the wall. Derek wrapped his jacket around the boy, the fabric easily consuming him, and lifted him into his arms. Scott didn't even think the guy was conscious, until he heard him murmur something about the freezer. Derek brought the human upstairs while Scott went to the freezer, dread pooling in his stomach. It was big enough to fit a dead body inside, and that was what Scott was imagining as he pulled the lock off of it with a flick of his wrist. He took a deep breath and steeled himself before he lifted the lid.

Bright yellow eyes met his dark red ones. A soft whine was all that he heard, and the beta wolf inside was cowering, pulling his legs up toward his chest and scrambling into one corner of the freezer. "Whoa," was all Scott could say at first. It was better than a dead body, but not by much. "Whoa, whoa. It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you," he told the young man. The beta didn't respond at all, just pressed tighter against the side of the freezer, his head lowered and arms covering it. It broke Scott's heart, how perfectly honed his instincts to protect himself were. He tried not to think about what happened to this poor guy every other time that door swung open or how long they'd kept him locked in here. But when he glanced up, he could see the scratch marks and digs in the thick metal of the inside of the freezer's door. Some were fresh, but some looked old, rust setting in on a few.

"Deucalion and the others are dead," Scott tried to keep his voice as soft as he could manage. He could hear the commotion upstairs as Derek brought the human out. "My name is Scott. I'm going to help you," he added. Scott could see a flash of yellow underneath the beta's arms, eyes peeking up at him. "The rest of my pack is upstairs," he started and the beta breathed a whimper of fear. "They're like you," Scott promised. "Let's get out of this basement and back to my place and we'll figure out what to do next. Okay?"

The beta didn't talk. Didn't move a muscle, save for closing his eyes. The brief eye contact they'd maintained was gone. "Hey," Scott murmured, and he reached in hesitantly. If he needed to, he was sure he could take this wolf in a fight, but he didn't want it to come to that.

"Scott?" he heard Peter's voice traveling down to him from upstairs. "We need to get out of here soon."

The alpha returned his gaze to the werewolf cowering in the corner of that freezer and he reached out to touch his hand against his arm. "Can you stand up?" he asked. The beta's head shifted a little in what might have been a nod. Scott took it as one anyway. He straightened, standing up, and helped the beta out of the freezer. He was skinny - even skinnier than the human had been - and tall, taller than Scott. And pale, with a mess of unruly curls that Scott just wanted to slide his fingers through. When the beta stumbled, Scott caught him.

It was like that, with an arm around him and supporting much of his weight, that Scott helped him up the stairs. The others had already been surprised enough by the human that Derek had brought up the stairs but finding a beta wolf down there was something else entirely. Scott could tell what every single one of his pack mates was thinking - this could have been them. Maybe it would have been them, if they'd survived losing this fight. Derek was still holding onto the human, curled in his arms, wrapped up in his coat. The beta slumped against Scott's shoulder as soon as they were upstairs, staring down at the floor. Shell-shocked, Scott thought, was the word for it.

"Loft?" Peter suggested and Scott nodded his head slightly. That was all anyone said. Erica helped Boyd out of the building. Derek carried the human. And Scott led the beta, wondering all the while what the hell they were going to do now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back at the loft, Derek and Scott try to find out more about the hostages they've rescued.

"Do you think you could stop being stubborn for five minutes of your life?"

Erica's voice pierced right through Peter's concentration and he glared at the back of her head momentarily. The blond was leaning over Boyd, trying to make him stay in a prone position on the couch. Boyd seemed determined to get up though, and Peter had been trying to block out the sound of their bickering for the past half hour. There were much more pressing things to listen to.

"It's not that bad," Boyd said, though he paused after every word and Peter could tell that it took a lot out of him, just to say that short sentence.

"They almost ripped your leg off and you're going to lay there and tell me that _it's not that bad_?" Erica demanded. Boyd didn't answer but Peter could picture the look on his face. Two parts grumpy, one part resignation.

Peter was more interested in listening to the boy that Derek had with him. The younger Hale had barely spoken two words to anyone else, and even though Peter had been able to occasionally pick up on a word or two on the way home, most of the things that the human was saying to Derek were too soft. All the words ran together until Peter couldn't make out anything more than a murmur. Like someone whispering across a room just loud enough for you to hear that they're making noise but not loud enough to understand. Derek had taken him to his own bedroom the moment they were inside the loft. And Scott was with the beta wolf upstairs, though Peter couldn't hear a peep coming from them. At this point, the beta could ostensibly be mute, he'd already considered a few times. As far as Peter knew, he hadn't spoken a word to any of them yet.

But the human? Now _he_ was a talker.

***

His name was Stiles and he'd been with the Alpha pack for two weeks. He was the son of the sheriff in a town not far from Beacon Hills. This sheriff had pissed the Alphas off, and their retaliation came in the form of a kidnapping. They'd promised to release the boy after getting out of the city limits - it had all been a sort of hostage negotiation as Derek understood it - but they'd decided at the last minute not to keep their word. 

"They sent him pictures," Stiles' voice was scratchy even after he'd gulped down the glass of water that Derek had given him. "They told him if he came looking for me, they'd start sending me back home in pieces. Oh my god, he's probably completely freaking out," Stiles tended to speak faster when he was nearing panic. Derek could hear the way his pulse sped up until it was racing, heart thumping in his chest so hard Derek thought it would explode right through his ribs.

"Shh," Derek told him.

Even though the guy had barely shut up for five seconds since Derek had carried him up those stairs, he'd said surprisingly little. From what Derek could tell, Stiles hadn't known anything about werewolves before the Alpha pack had kidnapped him. The beta in the freezer - Stiles didn't know his name - was already with them. Everything Derek had imagined that they'd done to Stiles, they had done to him, but he seemed to be bouncing back pretty well from it. Derek would've almost believed the "I'm fine" act, if he hadn't been able to hear the way his heart pounded and raced. He wasn't fine. 

"I can't believe this," the boy was mumbling, running his hands through his hair. "And you're one of them too?"

Derek hesitated for a moment. Every instinct in his body told him not to discuss werewolf business with a human, but this wasn't just some human from off the street. He knew the secret already. That was Deucalion's fault.

"Not exactly," he answered. "They were all Alphas. But most packs only have one Alpha."

Stiles squinted for a second. "And that's you?"

"No," Derek answered with a shake of his head. "Scott's our Alpha." 

He could practically see the gears turning in Stiles' head. Objectively, Derek guessed he couldn't fault Stiles for his confusion. If he was going to pick a leader out of them, based on what they looked like, he might've picked himself too. He was older than Scott and bigger than Peter. But Stiles didn't know Scott.

"Why? And what are you, then? And are there vampires, too? Because if there are vampires, I just... I just give up," Stiles rambled, shaking his head.

Derek tried his best to hide the smile that came to his face as he settled onto the bed, near enough to Stiles to talk to him but not too close. The last thing he wanted was to crowd him. "I've never heard about any vampires," Derek answered him. "There are other things, but... no vampires."

Stiles let out a breath in a sigh, laying back and resting his head on Derek's pillow. Derek knew that it was going to smell like him later, and he didn't know why the wolf inside him was so pleased at the thought.

"Thank god," Stiles murmured. "I couldn't handle vampires."

Derek had to roll his eyes. "All of that, you could handle, but vampires are where you draw the line?"

He almost thought he saw the corners of Stiles' mouth twitch. "I had to draw it somewhere," he drawled.

***

The beta wolf hadn't said anything. Scott was a patient person - to a fault, almost - but even he was starting to lose hope after the first hour. The beta was curled in a corner of the expansive upstairs bedroom of the Hale loft, his arms around his legs and rocking slightly, back and forth. The only time he'd moved from that was when Scott had brought up some water and something to eat; the beta ate like he'd never seen food before, and it made Scott ache for him, not for the first time. And not for the last, he was guessing.

"What's your name?" Scott asked him for the fifth time since they got up there. He sat on the floor near where the beta was, trying everything he could to be non-threatening.

And it was getting him absolutely nowhere.

"How long were you with them?" he asked. No answer.

"What did they do to you?"

Definitely no answer.

***

Scott met Derek where the others were gathered, once he'd given up asking the beta questions. He didn't know anything more than he had when they left the Alpha pack's hideout, and he felt frustration starting to set in.

"He won't talk," Scott murmured, raking his fingers through his hair.

"Well, his won't stop talking. Maybe you should trade," Peter suggested, nodding his head toward his nephew. His joke was not appreciated, if the look on Derek's face was anything to go by. That wasn't anything new though - no one in the pack appreciated his sense of humor at all. He would've said as much, if Scott and Derek weren't already conversing, quietly, between themselves.

"I don't even know his name," Scott was fretting.

"Stiles doesn't know who he is. The beta was already with the pack when they kidnapped him," Derek told him, his frown deepening. It turned to a scowl when Peter spoke up again, but his voice tended to have that effect on everyone.

"If I could make a suggestion."

***

Scott didn't want to do this. The beta had been through enough already, and forcing answers out of him was horrible, considering all of the other things that Alphas had forced him into. But Peter had had a point - he didn't have a lot of choices. And, as much as he hated to admit that Peter was right about anything, Scott _was_ an Alpha. A True Alpha, and that meant something.

He went back upstairs on his own and found the beta curled up where he'd left him. Scott took a deep breath before he moved to kneel in front of him.

"Listen to me," he ordered, but the beta didn't even look up. It wasn't until Scott was half a wolf, his eyes glowing scarlet and his nails digging into the floor, that he looked up. "LISTEN TO ME!"

The beta nodded slightly, his eyes glowing yellow in response. It was instinct. Primal.

"What's your name?" Scott couldn't push the growl from his voice no matter how hard he tried.

"Isaac," was the soft answer that came.

"Do you need anything?" Scott asked next. The beta shook his head. "Do you have anyone we can call?" Another shake of his head was the answer that Scott got. "How long were you with them?"

Isaac's voice shook a little when he whispered, like his voice wasn't used to making so many words. "I don't know."

Scott frowned, the red finally fading out of his eyes. It'd been longer than two weeks. A lot longer, Scott was guessing.

"Do you want to be part of this pack?" his voice softened when he asked. It wasn't an order. It wasn't even a request. Isaac's eyes stopped glowing too, fading back to the pretty blue that they always were. He looked at Scott for a long time, as though trying to work out what he meant and what would happen if he answered the wrong way.

Then, he nodded.


End file.
